Hounded

Groverfield T-Shirt and MORE in the HijiNKS ENSUE STORE!

Ohhhhh [Christmas] fuuuuudge! If I am not careful, A Christmas Story comics might become an annual thing.

In the post for the previous comic, I asked you to reveal your favorite non-traditional Christmas/holiday-times movie (Edward Scissorhands, Die Hard, Over The Top, etc). A Christmas Story is my favorite… well, Christmas story, period. The watching of it is, in fact, one of my only Christmas traditions. When it comes on TBS back to back for 24 hours on December 25th, I pretty much set the TV to channel 500,000 or whatever and leave it there until the presents are all opened, the relatives are gone and the leftover pumpkin pie beckons to me like a moist, high calorie Siren. It is surprisingly easy to finish an entire pumpkin pie by yourself in a day or so when you realize it is every bit as much breakfast and lunch as it is an after dinner-pie dessert.

A Christmas Story House & Museum

This is most likely the final HE comic of 2011. I offer you my most sincere thanks for your (you Fancy Bastards, that is) continuing support, both emotional and financial. This has certainly been my busiest year and my most exciting one as a professional person that draws bullshit on the Internet. The latter half of this year represents the first time since the inception of HE and the beginning of The Experiment that I have felt a slight release on the constant financial pressure that running a small business based on (again) drawing bullshit on the Internet (and giving it away for free) has presented me with. I am by no means “well off” or “flush with cash” or “a money having type of guy” or “more words in quotes,” but for the first time ever I feel like I am out of the woods, or at least approaching what seems to be a clearing ahead. It feels like if I can somehow manage to keep going at this pace, in a couple of years things will be pretty much OK. That’s a nice feeling. The constant struggle to stay afloat is still very much alive, but now it feels somehow on a larger timeline. It’s more like I’m trying to get to the next year as opposed to wondering how I’m going to pay the mortgage next month.

I say all of that so say this again: Thank you. Thank you all for making 2011 a truly life-changing year for me. Thank you for indulging me, supporting me, and finding some modicum of joy in these weird pictures of mostly dicks that I upload in this space several times a week. The previous sentence is a perfect description of my dream job, and I get to do it every single day because there are geeky weirdos like me all over the world that feel the same dumb feelings I do about TV and movies warp nacelles and TARDISes and what not. There is even a small subset of you that will chuckle when I say “weird pictures of mostly dicks” is Velera III crystalline Microbrain-ese for HijiNKS ENSUE.

See you in 2012, nerds.

Yippie-Kye-Ay Mr. Falcon

Michael Keaton’s Jack Frost isn’t counted among the best Christmas movies of all time since, much like The Santa Clause 3, it suffers from canonical issues. A later novel in the expanded Jack Frost universe (the EJFU to us Frosters) revealed that Michael Keaton’s character, Jack, did not actually die in the first movie, but instead was placed in transdimensional hyper-stasis by the Intergalactic Frost Lord Gorrab The Most Frigid, and He (not Jack) was the one manipulating the snowman in order to win the trust of Jack’s son, Joseph, whose soul contained the Infinity Starseed – a stellar engine with the ability to forge solar systems or, in the wrong hands, destroy them. It was put there by the Grand Millenials when he was born in order to keep the Starseed hidden from… well you know all of this already. I’m just geeking out. Anyway, considering all of that and the fact that the novelization already reveals that the whole story takes place 100,000 years in the past on an “Earth-like planet,” I don’t think it’s fair to call it a “Christmas movie.”

I have received some very generous gifts from my Amazon Wishlist and from donators in the last couple of weeks. I want to make sure to give big giant holiday-style thanks to Fancy Bastards: Elliot Moss, Cole Parker, Anonymous Ghostbusters gifter, Alyssa Vaughan, Trevor Spratt, Dan & Toni Arthur and whoever purchased all of the Pixar Blu-Rays. Being the father of a 4 year old, I am pretty much primarily on the “giving” side of Xmas, so your gifts were certainly appreciated and made my insides feel all squishy and gross.

COMMENTERS: What is your favorite non-traditional Christmas/holiday movie? Either a movie that takes place during the holidays, but doesn’t focus on them, or a movie that you just love watching every year around that time for whatever reason.

UPDATE 12/29/11:

DAVID WILLIS KEEPS DRAWING ME IN HIS COMICS!!! PLEASE BUY HIS CRUISE FUNDRAISER PRINT (and also THIS ONE) SO HE WILL STOP AND WE CAN GO ON A CRUISE TOGETHER WHICH IS TOTALLY NOT GAY BECAUSE OUR WIVES WILL BE THERE OR MAYBE THEY WON’T I MEAN ACCIDENTS CAN HAPPEN AT SEA.

REMINDR: I have resurrected my TUMBLR and started things off by posting my giant “How to save Terra Nova” rant (mentioned in this comic’s post) and a free mobile desktop wallpaper of “Dino Jesus.” I have plans for this TUMBLR in 2012 that involve changing some of the ways I offer content and who I offer it to. The basic strategy is more content to more people. I do not see this as being a negative.

I Know My First Name Is Santa

Wil Wheaton and I got excited and made this Three Wheaton Moon shirt. You can buy it! Then you can wear it! Only two steps to total geeky happiness? Sign me up!

Lifetime: The Network Your Aunt Likes (You know that ONE aunt? The one that moved back in with your grandma after her divorce.)

My mom pays for an entire array of cable channels, but she really only uses four of them: Lifetime, Lifetime Movies, Lifetime Real Women and The Hallmark Channel. Around Christmas time (roughly August through February) she parks the TV squarely in the middle of this estrogen programming block and feasts on programming designed to both uplift the spirit and tug at the tear ducts of middle-aged lady types. Also, most of the movies are about your dead relatives returning for Christmas as angels. I saw one over at her place about a dead grandma that just shows up at her family’s house at Christmas, and instead of calling the boys in the grayish-brown suits with the nuclear backpacks they’re all just, “Grandma, it sure is great that Jesus let you come down here and bake cookies for us!” It was intensely creepy. Everything about it that made my mom go, “Awwww,” made me go, “AHAHGHGHGHGHG!!!!” Not 2 weeks later I was back over there and, I shit you not, there was an entirely different movie about a dead relative coming back as a Christmas angel. I expect there are hundreds of them. Like Pokemon.

CONFESSION TIME: I have seen one Lifetime movie that actually made me sad, nearly to the point of tears. I had just finished plowing through 2 or 3 seasons of Dead Like Me and, while flipping channels, saw the star of that show (Ellen Muth) on the screen. Turns out it was a Lifetime movie called The Truth About Jane about a girl (Muth) realizing she’s gay, and how her family treats her like a criminal because of it. They try to “deal with the problem” as if she had been caught with a gun and a bag of PCP. I knew what they were doing! Those bastards were showing me things that I already thought were sad and they were making them even sadder! SHE JUST WANTED TO DATE GIRLS AND BE LOVED! THAT’S ALL! SHE WAS A GOOD GIRL! YOU TREATED HER LIKE A MONSTER! YOU WERE THE MONSTER, MOM! YOU WERE… the… BLOOOO HOOO HOOO HOOOOO!!!!

I have received some very generous gifts from my Amazon Wishlist and from donators in the last couple of weeks. I want to make sure to give big giant holiday-style thanks to Fancy Bastards: Elliot Moss, Cole Parker, Anonymous Ghostbusters gifter, Alyssa Vaughan, Trevor Spratt and Dan & Toni Arthur. Being the father of a 4 year old, I am pretty much primarily on the “giving” side of Xmas, so your gifts were certainly appreciated and made my insides feel all squishy and gross.

COMMENTERS: Sappiest, cheesiest or most unbelievable TV Movie you’ve ever seen? Is there one that actually activated your human emotion chip?

UPDATE 12/28/11:

Also, I have resurrected my TUMBLR and started things off by posting my giant “How to save Terra Nova” rant (mentioned in this comic’s post) and a free mobile desktop wallpaper of “Dino Jesus.” I have plans for this TUMBLR in 2012 that involve changing some of the ways I offer content and who I offer it to. The basic strategy is more content to more people. I do not see this as being a negative.

¿Terra? No Va

“Winter Is Coming” shirts are now IN THE STORE!!! [based on this comic]

“¿Terra? No Va” translates to “Terra? Doesn’t Go.” As in, “With such a great premise Terra Nova could go SO MANY AMAZING PLACES, but choses not to.”

I have written at least four pages of stream of consciousness, black and white notebooks from Se7en-style commentary on how I would fix Terra Nova. I am going to try to arrange it into a coherent, readable, non-manifesto format and post it here for your perusal. The bottom line is Terra Nova is a FANTASTIC concept with loads of potential that the writers and producers of the show seem hell bent on completely ignoring. I have several holiday-time, family-style obligations keeping me from organizing my mad ramblings now (plus I’ve been awake for 2ish days and the voices are starting to make some really good points), so check back over the weekend and hopefully I will have ~~completed my transformation into a great and terrible red dragon~~… posted my thoughts on how to fix Terra Nova.

UPDATE: I have resurrected my TUMBLR and posted my Terra Nova rant all in one fell swoop.

COMMENTERS: Who else could save Terra Nova and how would they do it? How would you save it (which specific issues would you address)? Do you think it doesn’t need saving? That is certainly an opinion one could have… IF THEY WERE A SIXER SPIE! Of course there is no actual punishment in Terra Nova for being a Sixer spie, so… carry on I guess.

[thanks to @doctoravenue, @robgonzo and @dotcomaphobe for the title to today’s comic]

It being holiday-type times and all, I thought I would mention that I have an Amazon wish list. It mostly consists of Blu-Rays right now, since I finally got a Blu-Ray player (mostly to more conveniently stream Netflix). So there’s that if you are interested. If you’d like to send a card or anything else for that matter, the mailing address is on the contact page.

The Zooquels

“Winter Is Coming” shirts are now IN THE STORE!!! [based on this comic]

Eventually they release a Zoo movie called W3 Bough7 4 2oo, but no one can tell if it’s a prequel or a sequel. It stars Vin Diesel.

This doesn’t qualify as an actual Wheaton comic dare, since Wheaton merely suggested I do something I was already going to do and did not invoke the “DARE” command. Our relationship is complex and rife with arbitrary rules.

I’m sure We Bought A Zoo is a fine film about a man that probably buys a zoo, and in fixing up the zoo realizes he is actually fixing himself, or is family or whatever. That said, I had a ridiculous amount of fun dreaming up sequels for it on Twitter a few nights ago. Here are some of my favorites:

We Bought Zoo 2: We Just Can’t Stop Buying Zoos
We Bought A Zoo 2: I’m Going To Flip This Zoo After The Market Rebounds
We Bought A Zoo Too: Who’s Going To Fock All These Zebras? (a sequel to panel 2 above)
We Bought A Zoo Too: A Kangaroo Ate Robin Williams. Fock This Zoo. (a sequel to THAT sequel to panel 2 above)
We Bought a Zoo 3: You Bought ANOTHER Fucking Zoo?! God Damn It. (via @southworth)
We Bought a Zoo 3: There aren’t even 3 zoos within driving distance! We have lost everything to your zoo problem! EVERYTHING!
We Bought A Zoo 2: Zoolander 3
We Bought A Zoo 2: Clearly We Did Not Think This Through. There Is Puma Shit Everywhere And Most Of The Animals Have Died
Oui, Bought A Zoo: We Bought A Zoo in France (via @BillCorbett)
We Bought A Zoo 2: The Zoo Is Coming From Inside The House! Our House Is Literally A Zoo! No Joke! Stop Calling, We Are Closed!

COMMENTERS: Keep it going. Give me your Zooquel title. Alternately, assume the next Zooquel is an action movie and give me your worst zoo-related one liners.